Monday, 28 September 2015

Its that time again, time for more Knight action! This is the second of the planned Knight Styrix for the Mechanicum army, and the penultimate knight for the force with just a Knight Errant remaining) I've had a fair bit of practise of painting Knights this year, so I've managed to make good progress in a short amount of time.

The main body has the base colours on.

The armour plates have most of the base colours on and also waiting for washes.

weapons are ready for washing. The weapons are magnetised of course.

By the time this post went up the main body had been washed and now is waiting for the final drybrush and highlights.

In other Mechanicum news, i bought some foam trays especially for the Mechanicum. This set me back a rather nasty £70 for 5 trays from KR Multicase, but was pretty happy once the trays were plucked and the models were in. I took these guys for a run out a few weeks ago and the journey to the FLGS and back resulted in 8 breakages!! That's what prompted the purchase so i hope they will help protect my beloved Mechanicum!

Tuesday, 22 September 2015

I now have a few weapons in the Mechanicum arsenal that pack Rad Phage (or Space cancer as its more commonly known!!) If a model suffers an unsaved wound from a weapon with the Rad Phage rule, then it suffers a -1 toughness for the rest of the game. not much use against single wound models, but great against character models, maybe even Primarchs! Over the course of a game, this could be a pain to keep track of.....time for some markers!

The initial idea was to sculpt some skulls onto 28mm bases.....humm, way to much effort! So i started to rummage through some of the really old bits boxes, ones that have a thick layer of dust on! I distantly remembered casting up some skulls years ago, and knew there was a bag of them somewhere. Thankfully i found them. These skulls are casts of ones that came with the Reaver Titan. At the time i must have thought they were cool and cast up a bunch of them, which I'm very glad i did! There were 23 in the bag - these would be perfect!

White is a bit boring, so i went with a simple green scheme to liven the markers up a bit - the colour of Space Cancer!

First up they were undercoated in black (Army Painter) Sorry for the sideways pics, i don't know why they do this sometimes!

Then a blast of Vallejo Game Air Sick Green.

Then a smaller blast of Vallejo Game Air Livery Green.

And that's it! Some nice green Rad Phage markers.

I'm glad i went with these and not skulls on 28mm bases as they would have been way to big. These skulls can sit quite nicely next to the unfortunate models now riddled with Space Cancer!

Friday, 18 September 2015

I was just about to pick up the paintbrush and start refreshing the Reaver when i realised i wanted to sort out the weapons first!

The Reaver has access to a large variety of weapons, most of which have been modelled by ForgeWorld. With this in mind i wanted to magnetise the weapons on this Reaver for a bit more flexibility.

The weapons are rather large, so a suitable magnet would bee needed. I went with a 20mm disc magnet at a 2mm thickness. This was a bit bigger than the joints themselves on the arms of the Reaver, so i needed to adapt them slightly to create a snug connection. I used a 25mm hole cutter drill bit to create a suitable recess for the magnets. These arms will be fixed to the Titan, so the weapons themselves will be the removable parts.

The weapons themselves were easier to adapt and the spaces on the connection points much bigger, so they could easily accommodate a 20mm magnet. This piece is the main weapon housing for the Gatling Blaster.

This one is the main housing for the Laser Blaster.

Once the Araldite is dry I'll see if the magnets are strong enough! Fingers crossed!

Wednesday, 16 September 2015

When Forge World designed their awesome Myrmidon Destructor models, in their infinite wisdom, they failed to make a weapons pack for them....very annoying. So if we wanted to run different weapons configurations we either have to buy a load more squads or try and do it ourselves.

I went with the latter!

In order to have two 3 man squads of Myrmidon Destructors armed with Conversion Beamers and Volkite Culverins, i needed to convert one of each.

Firstly i did the Conversion Beamer. The starting point for this was a FW Conversion Beamer that i traded off a friend. It originally belonged to some sort of Space Marine character or something. That on its own didn't quite look right though, so i extended the weapon using the end of a Legion Predator Conversion beamer.

The fit was perfect, and it was a close match to the existing aesthetic. That was one down.

Next was the Volkite Culverin. This was a little easier as FW already did a Volkite Culverin for the Legion Support Squads. I grabbed one off eBay and set about making it fit my Myrmidon Destructor, which was a very simple task.

The aesthetic is OK on this model, but the Culverin is slightly smaller than the original Destructors. Its not to bad though.

Ive made a start on the painting. Got the base colours down and the washes on. Highlights to go and we're there.

In other news, i managed to persuade Mrs GunGrave to have a go at painting a model! I had some old Soriatas models lying around so gave her one of those. She did pretty good for a first attempt! She had to paint over an old crappy paint job as well, so some of the detail was lost. Perhaps I'll get her into 40K in the end!

Thursday, 10 September 2015

Hot on the heels of the recently completed Krios Venator squadron is the final Krios Battle Tank. This tanks was prepped along with the Venators a while back ready for quick completion when the time came.

As with the Venators I've used a slightly lighter shade of red to create batter shading and contrast.

I like that the Tech Priests are modelled slightly differently to that of the Venators (chest and arms if your not to familiar with them)

As with the Venators, i went back tot he last 2 Krios and repainted their gun shields with the lighter red. I only repainted the gun shields on the tanks as i could easily remove them. I wasn't quite prepared to repaint the entire tank for a slightly lighter shade of red!!

Now i have a full squadron of Krios Tanks! These guys will be on anti infantry duties of course, with their Shred and Rending Large Blasts chewing through Loyalist scum! They'll be fighting alongside the Death Guard of course!

Phew, the Mechanicum have really done well on units in recent weeks! Some more serious pallet cleansing will be needed soon. Perhaps a Warlord Titan....

Monday, 7 September 2015

I made a rather exciting Titan related purchase the other day (ooooo what could it be!) which they'll be more on soon. However, it has got me thinking about my Reaver Titan Praetorian.

I painting this bad ass over 5 years ago, and the paint scheme is starting to look a bit tired and dated. With an exciting new addition to the Legio Astorum on its way, i want to make sure Praetorian looks the part.

All aspects of this model need a bit of attention to be honest. Its been through numerous bashes scrapes over the years.

The heraldry on the carapace needs some serious revision. My skills are much better than what they were 5 years ago!

Over time a few bits have come off the model as well, so i'll probably have to revisit some of the joints and reinforce them.

First things first though, i had to disassemble the Titan to make it easier to repaint. The armour panels came off easily enough. The left hip here was a bit loose so i forced it off so i could make sure its securely attached after painting.

Don't ask me why this is upside down, Blogger has some funny uploading ideas sometimes! This is the main carapace with the armour panels and weapons arms removed. The arms needed forcing off as they were very well stuck on!

I'm still happy with the interior detail so i won't be repainting any of that. Also it was painted while in pieces so painting it now will be a bit more difficult.

These are all the armour panels after they had been removed from the Titan! They'll be much easier to paint this way.

The disassembly didn't take to long so i started playing with some armour ideas. I already decided that i wanted a blue mottled effect on the armour panels, so i gave the panels a patchy spray of Vallejo Game Air Ultramarine Blue. This went straight over the existing blue quite nicely - we had a winner straight away! It livened up the colour and made all that blue a little more interesting.

I also started on the legs. On the right leg you can see where Ive been trying out a different gold trim. This is GW Shining Gold, but i think its a bit to orange/brass. I'd prefer a more yellowy gold. The original colour was a VERY old school GW Shining Gold when it looked like this:

I do still have a viable pot of this which is about 2/3 full. I'm just worried that it wont go the distance over the new editions and the Reaver repaint, so i think a more modern colour is needed. I'll play around with a few more recipes for now and see what i can do.

Friday, 4 September 2015

A quick progress update on the Contemptor Mortis. He's nearly there, just a few more highlights and washes to go.

In the last update i mentioned that i had a few Fists to build for the Contemptors (3 to be exact) This will enable me to run 2 CC Dread's, as one of the Dread's already has a Fist. I'm very curious to see how effective this may be!